The Invisible Labour of Female
Migrants in the Care Sector

Megha Amrith

Female Agency, Mobility and Socio-cultural Change

UNU-GCM
Policy Report 03/06

This is a report of the United Nations University Institute on Globalization, Culture and Mobility. It forms part of the series, Female
Agency, Mobility and Socio-cultural Change. It should be cited as:
Amrith, Megha. The Invisible Labour of Female Migrants in the Care
Sector, Policy Report No. 03/06. Barcelona: United Nations University Institute on Globalization, Culture and Mobility (UNU-GCM),
2015.
The United Nations University (UNU) is the academic arm of theUnited Nations (UN). It bridges the academic world and the UN
system. Its goal is to develop sustainable solutions for current
and future problems of humankind in all aspects of life. Througha problem-oriented and interdisciplinary approach it aims at applied research and education on a global scale. UNU was founded
in 1973 and is an autonomous organ of the UN General Assembly. The University comprises a headquarters in Tokyo, Japan, andmore than a dozen Institutes and Programmes worldwide.
The UNU Institute on Globalization, Culture and Mobility (UNUGCM) focuses on globalization, culture and mobility through thelens of migration and media. It engages in rigorous research inthese areas, sharing knowledge and good practice with a broad
range of groups, collectives and actors within and beyond theacademy. Its commitments are at local and global levels, whereby
it seeks to bridge gaps in discourses and practices, so as to work
towards the goals of the United Nations with regard to development, global partnership, sustainability and justice.
This research programme focuses on the feminization of migration
as one of the most significant social patterns to have emerged in
the course of the last century. Too often, female migrants occupy
vulnerable positions in their host societies, engaging in domestic
work, sex work and other unregulated sectors. Despite being so
vulnerable and despite established patterns of exploitation, thenumbers of women who choose to migrate is rising. This research
programme focuses on this phenomenon, in order to better understand why and how migration may offer routes to empowerment to women. A specific area of focus will be the extent to which
migration allows women from the global south new sociocultural
horizons as they cross over and settle in the global north.

The Invisible Labour of Female
Migrants in the Care Sector
Megha Amrith
Contents
Summary | 1
Introduction | 2
Part 1: Nursing | 5
Part 2: Home-Based Care Labour | 9
Part 3: Intimate Labour | 15
Joint Conclusions and Recommendations | 19
References | 21

SummaryThis extended policy report will consider the economy of care andintimacy within which many female migrants are employed in the
global labour market, ensuring the well being of individuals andfamilies worldwide while also pursuing their own goals for economic and social empowerment. The report will feature three parts on
migrant women employed in nursing, caregiving in private homes,
and intimate labour, primarily sex work. It will demonstrate the different understandings that women have of their labour in each areaof work and will examine how labour in this sector continues to be
stigmatised, poorly valued and exploited. It also examines positive
examples of empowerment and agency. While each type of labour
within the care sector has distinct policy challenges, there are also
overlaps and ambiguities between them. The report will indicate
how policy-makers can better address the needs of female migrant
workers within the often-invisible economies of care and intimacy.

The Invisible Labour of Female Migrants in the Care Sector | 1

Introduction
This report will examine three of the principal forms of migrant women’s labour in the economy of care and intimacy, as they work to ensure the wellbeing of individuals and families worldwide while also
pursuing their own goals for economic and social empowerment.
Their care labour takes place within a global political-economic context of structural inequalities and the globalisation of care. It willfeature three sections on migrant women employed in both formal
and informal labour roles in the care sector: (1) nursing (2) child andelderly care in private homes and (3) intimate labour, primarily sex
work. This report will demonstrate the different understandings thatwomen have of their labour in each area of work and consider thedifferent social statuses associated with each type of labour. It will
be concerned with how certain types of labour are valorised, whilst
others are stigmatised, poorly valued and where abuse and exploitation at work occur frequently.
The report outlines the distinctions and overlaps between seemingly distinct types of labour that migration women might engage
in simultaneously. The role of female migrants in spheres of labourthat relate to care and intimacy has been a prominent feature ofgendered labour markets around the world and critical to the social
reproduction of households and societies. However, little attention
has been given to the diverse sector of caregiving considered aswhole, or what scholar Linda McDowell calls ‘body work’ (2009), in
policy circles. This report will indicate what can be done to ensurethat policy-makers at different levels better address the needs andvulnerabilities of female migrant workers within the principal areasof the care services sector, in public and private institutions andspaces. This will include the need to recognise and reduce the prevalence of precarious unpaid work and poor working conditions, toimprove migrant women’s rights, tackle structural gender inequalities and ensure equitable human development.
The provision of care is increasingly commodified and dependent
on a global system of female migrant labour. Societies across theworld are experiencing new social and intercultural encounters andinterdependencies in intimate and physically proximate spaces.
Though critical to sustaining human life and wellbeing, the labour
performed by migrant women in care economies is often not recognised by labour legislation and is not included within social security
schemes. Labour in the care sector is situated along a spectrum thatis labelled professional and ‘highly-skilled’ on one end, and ‘unskilled’ on the other end. This system of labour reflects national,

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racial, socio-economic and gendered inequalities, at the same time
as it might provide opportunities to migrant women for empowerment, exercising agency and redefining gender-based power relations (Constable, 2009). However, the positive transformations canonly be realised if policy measures do more to protect and value
migrant women’s labour rights in these spheres.
Labels of ‘skilled’ and ‘unskilled’ that are often used in the implementation of differentiated migration policies do not necessarily
match the realities of doing care labour and the ambiguities thatexist in practice. For instance, those trained as skilled professionals with specialised expertise and degrees, might end up working
either in large hospitals, or in domestic jobs that are typically labelled ‘unskilled’ as a result of the workings of transnational labour
markets. Meanwhile, those without professional qualifications also
bring with them crucial skills, knowledge and experience in areas
such as caregiving but are not recognised as doing so. Such labels
thus need to be re-evaluated in order to recognise and give value
to the wide range of skills and knowledge that societies across theworld depend upon for everyday life and care.

The Invisible Labour of Female Migrants in the Care Sector | 3

Photo: ILO in Asia and the Pacific. Creative Commons BY-NC-ND

4 | UNU-GCM Policy Report 03/06

Part 1: Nursing
While international mobility in nursing is not new, the increasing demand for nurses around the world and the new aspirations of trained
nurses for international experience, are dynamics that are accompanying the globalisation of medical care in the twenty-first century. The
World Health Organization (WHO, 2010) indicates that rising incomes,
new medical technology, increased specialisation of health services, andpopulation ageing are pushing up the demand for healthcare workers
in a number of higher-income countries, and there is an active recruitment industry involved in this process. Nurses across the world now see
international migration as offering opportunities for better salaries, professional development and more favourable working conditions.
Policy and research attention has focussed on the inequalities in healthsystems within and between countries and regions, with discussions
concentrating on ensuring ethical recruitment and concerns aboutbrain drain.1 Less attention has been directed at the individuals performing this labour transnationally, and particularly, the social and cultural meanings of this labour, how it is experienced by migrant womenand the implications for their wellbeing. Nursing has historically been
perceived as ‘women’s work’. In many parts of the world, it has taken
on religious inflections and is regarded as a ‘respectable vocation’(Choy, 2003; Marks, 1994); in other cases, it is regarded as low-status‘dirty work’ (Damodaran, 2013). In some cultural contexts, these understandings of nursing labour have shifted through professionalisation.
While women are still strongly represented in nursing, its professionalisation and internationalisation reflect a move towards greater genderequality. In other contexts, perceptions of nursing as low-status female
labour persist. An awareness of these different cultural constructions of
nursing shapes migrant women’s experiences of this labour in diverse
institutions and cultural contexts within which they work as migrants.
Case-Study: Professionalising Nursing in the Philippines2
The Philippines is a useful case study with regard to international
nurse migration as it is a country with a significant presence ofnurses working overseas, particularly over the past decade (Lorenzo et. al, 2007; Matsuno, 2011). Since the 1970s, Filipina women
The Invisible Labour of Female Migrants in the Care Sector | 5

1. While there arealmost 60 million
health workers
globally, they are
unevenly distributed
around the world
and within particularregions. Moreover,they are most needed,
and least present, inthe poorest
regions of low-income
countries (WHO,2010). The World
Health Organization
has endorsed an
ethical code forcountries to follow
in the recruitment of
migrant health workers(see http://www.who.
int/hrh/migration/code/practice/en/).

2. This case-study isbased upon researchfindings from an indepth anthropolgicalresearch project
conducted by the
autor with Filipina
migrant nurses in
Singapore and in
Manila from 20092010 (see Amrith2010).

3. See UNU-GCM
Policy Report 03/01(Amrith, 2015) fora more in-depth
discussion on this, inaddition to reading
about counterexamples of agency
and activism among
domestic workers.

have been going abroad primarily as domestic workers; this historyof labour migration and the undervaluation of domestic work has
meant that in their journeys abroad, Filipina women are negatively
stereotyped as coming from a ´nation of servants´, which has madethe image of the overseas Filipino worker a female image associated with exploitation, abuse and low-status labour.3 However, a
new generation of young Filipinos, with aspirations for new experiences and opportunities have been enrolling in nursing colleges
across the country. Nursing is increasingly seen as a professional
and lucrative career intertwined with the possibilities for overseas
employment in higher-paying and higher-status jobs. It can beseen as one way of dissociating overseas female migration with thenegative gendered and racialised perceptions of care work, to amore professionalised view of care labour that requires specialised
and technical medical expertise and training. The white uniforms
that are seen across Manila among young nursing students are intended to gloss over differences based on gender, socio-economic and class backgrounds, to make nursing more ‘gender neutral’and decoupling it with poorly valued ‘women’s work’. Instead, it isbeing redefined as a medical profession open to women and men,even though women still form a majority. There are hopes that thiscan offer individuals and families the possibilities for empowerment and social mobility in a different manner than other sectorsthat depend on female migrant labour. The nursing phenomenon,
however, has also drawn critics for the increasing commodificationof nursing and the way nursing schools and recruitment agencies
are making profits as a fast-growing industry. There are also fears ofbrain drain from poorer areas of the Philippines which face nursing
shortages, yet which do not offer desirable conditions to trained
nurses who seek higher-paying overseas opportunities.
However, even if migrant nurses are well respected in families andcommunities at home, the reality is that the overseas work thatthey find does not always meet their professionalised expectations. Many find themselves mistaken for ‘just caregivers’ or ‘domestic workers’, recalling once again the gendered and racialised
stereotypes that nursing had promised to override. This draws attention to different cultural understandings and practices of particular types of labour within the care and medical sector and thepersistent forms of discrimination and prejudice based on class,gender and nationality for nurses who cross borders. Nurses alsofind themselves working as carers in charitable nursing homes forthe elderly, for example, rather than in prestigious public and private hospitals, doing a lot more hands-on bedside care work thanthey might have expected in their medical training. This is workthat is often performed in some countries by female family members, rather than paid nurses (Wills et. al, 2009)
6 | UNU-GCM Policy Report 03/06

The nursing profession in the Philippines is one example of positively redefining care labour. However, it could also have the effectof reinforcing divisions between labels such as ‘professional’ and‘unskilled’, continuing the stigmatisation of migrant women who goabroad as domestic workers or caregivers, who also contribute importantly to the care sector (yet who may be trained in other areas,or not able to afford a nursing education).
Shifting Understandings of Nursing in other Contexts
Other cultural contexts present a different picture. In Bangladesh, forexample, a study conducted by Aminuzamman (2007) found that thatsocially and culturally, nursing is considered a low-esteem job. Mostof the respondents of this study said that they would not consider
taking up nursing in a Bangladeshi hospital, but might be willing toaccept a nursing career in Europe and North America as international migration is thought to offer ‘social honour, prestige and dignity’.
Similarly, according to Damodaran (2013: 186), nursing employment
in India also reflects the gendered division of labour in the South
Asian social context and ‘carries with it typical stigmatizing notions of“dirty work” due to its association with contact with human bodies,particularly those of unfamiliar men, making it potentially taboo or“morally degrading” for women’. It is also stigmatised for the close
proximity to the ‘sick’ and the ‘poor’ (see also George, 2000). The
study, however, adds the caveat that the experience of stigma also
depends on the specific religious backgrounds of nurses, and thathaving a Christian background ‘helps in de-stigmatising nursing’,
given the historical construction of nursing as a vocation or calling inChristianity (Damodaran, 2013: 187). More recently, the association ofnursing as an international profession is also slowly transforming theperceptions of this labour and seeing families invest in nursing educations for their children. International migration in the South Asian
context may offer women working as nurses avenues for greater independence and freedom, supporting their families financially andchallenging existing gendered hierarchies. International migration
for nurses can therefore enable transformations in labour identities,
as nursing is more highly regarded abroad, and also transformations
in gender roles at home as a result of holding multiple identities of
migrants, workers and women.
These examples demonstrate different cultural and gendered understandings of nursing labour that are relevant to understand inincreasingly multicultural workforces. Within the category of nursing
are a whole range of institutions and roles, many of which are still
heavily gendered and invisible. Nurses work in different labour conditions: some work in public and private hospitals within which they
are in institutions governed by professional bodies and that adhere
to labour legislation. Others work in less visible charitable or privaThe Invisible Labour of Female Migrants in the Care Sector | 7

tised nursing homes with poor pay and alienating working conditions. This is an area that requires greater policy attention. In somecases, women are still stigmatised as doing ‘dirty’ work, others areseen as more professional and their labour more highly valued; efforts should thus focus on changing perceptions of nursing labour,in all of its roles, and to pay attention to the different kinds of institutions within which migrant women work. It would also be usefulto raise awareness in origin countries of variable working conditions
abroad and different visa categories that have specific conditions
under which nurses might migrate. Nurse migrants are becoming‘agents of economic change’ in the international labour market and‘may be pioneers in an informal social movement towards genderemancipation’ (Kingma, n/a); only if perceptions and conditions of
their work also reflect these possibilities internationally. The case ofnursing also demonstrates the range of skills that migrant womencontribute within the broad field of care. However, oftentimes thesequalifications are not internationally transferable or recognised whichmeans they also take on jobs and roles that they do not associatewith their qualifications.

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Part 2: Home-Based Care Labour
While the international migration of nurses demonstrates the participation of migrant women in the institutional provision of care, there is still
a lot of care work performed by migrant women in private households;
this includes the care for young children and the elderly. Home-basedcare labour is a sector within which both migrant domestic workers
and migrant women with nursing qualifications might be employed.
Even though they may have different backgrounds and skill sets, they
may be recruited or find work within the same employment and visa
category. This reflects a certain degree of ambiguity within the transnational economy of care that depends upon female migrant labour.
Increasingly, as England and Henry (2013: 560) explain, ‘carers arepracticing paid care work in numerous sorts of private and public
spaces. The expansion, redistribution and in many instances, marketization of care work – particularly for the young, elderly, and sick,involves private households too’. There has been a lot of scholarshipon migrant women working in domestic settings and the exploitative
working conditions to which they are often subjected (HondagneuSotelo, 2007; Anderson and Shutes, 2014; England and Henry, 2013;
Ehrenreich and Hochschild, 2003). Migrant women are hired in private households not only as domestic workers to perform householdlabour, but also to care for children and the elderly, thus meetingthe needs of multi-generational households. However, they are often undercompensated for their multiple roles as nannies to young
children, caregivers for the elderly and domestic workers, which aretasks that an individual migrant woman might be expected to perform. Moreover, the care for children and the elderly also requires asignificant amount of affective or emotional labour that is demanding, challenging and not adequately valued or accounted for throughthe wages of migrant women employed in households.
Some of these shortcomings in the recognition of affective labour
begins at the recruitment stage. For example, when women are
hired to perform certain tasks in households abroad, they may not
be given accurate or full information on their job tasks e.g. they may
be contracted as domestic workers, but may find upon their arrival in
The Invisible Labour of Female Migrants in the Care Sector | 9their new homes that they also have to care for young and elderlyfamily members in the household. Similarly, those hired as caregivers may also find themselves having to do household cleaning. The
conflation of different labour roles leads to longer working hours,
fatigue and higher possibilities for exploitation.
4. Migrant Workers
Alliance:
http://www.
migrantworkersalliance.
org

In many countries, women working within private households arrive under restrictive immigration categories and are oftentimes
not covered by social protection and labour legislation. Moreover,narratives of being ‘one of the family’ persist in situations where
migrant women care for young children, which makes it easier for
exploitation to take place under the guise of helping within thefamily and making it more difficult to draw the boundaries between
labour, rest and time off. Taking the example of Singapore, migrant
caregivers working in private households have ‘work permits’ which
are the most restrictive of visas. They limit the mobility of femalemigrants who are mostly required to ‘live-in’ and whose working
conditions are determined by employers. Hidden behind closed
doors, the labour these women perform is often invisible and is
not adequately protected. Tight immigration rules combined withpoorly valued labour make migrant women vulnerable to exploitation. As Anderson and Shutes (2014: 16) argue, ‘combined with thehistorical devaluation of care labour (where much care work is defined as “unskilled”), this means that employers recruit those withleast bargaining power…increasingly, international migrant women workers fill this gap’. The Domestic Workers Convention 2011
(C189), which entered into force in 2013, constitutes an important
step in the international arena for the guarantee of decent working
conditions for domestic workers, yet more countries need to ratify
the Convention in order for it to have an impact on the wellbeingof migrant women. The role of civil society activism and advocacy isalso important in improving working conditions within households.
In Canada, for example, the Live-in Caregiver programme is one
that brings in household-based migrant care workers and attracts
migrant women with different backgrounds. Civil society groups,
such as the Migrant Workers Alliance4 (composed of various advocacy and community groups, unions, workers and community members) are active in highlighting the rights and social protections that
‘Live-in Caregivers’ are entitled to and to advocate for equal rights.
Rethinking Care Chains
The changing global configurations of care have influenced a great
deal of the large-scale movements of female migrant care labour.
This has been discussed in much of the sociological literature as‘global care chains’, a term coined by Arlie Hochschild (see also:
Yeates, 2009a; 2009b; Ehrenreich and Hochschild, 2003). A global
care chain according to Hochschild (2000) is:
10 | UNU-GCM Policy Report 03/06

a series of personal links between people across the globe
based on the paid or unpaid work of caring. A typical global
care chain might work something like this: an older daughter from a poor family in a third world country cares for her
siblings (the first link in the chain) while her mother works
as a nanny caring for the children of a nanny migrating to afirst world country (the second link) who, in turn, cares for thechild of a family in a rich country (the final link). Each kind ofchain expresses an invisible human ecology of care, one care
worker depending on another.
Care chains highlight the structural inequalities implicit in the global
political economy of care and has seen care taking on greater transnational dimensions. They have been important in feminist analysesof socially reproductive labour in the world: analyses that investigate
the political, economic and social inequalities which configure migrant care labour flows and the accompanying forms of exploitationthat are often a part of this mobility. Bringing together both migration and social policy into a single paradigm, care chains emphasise
the centrality of care labour to livelihood strategies of households
across the world and are relevant at individual, household, community and national levels (Yeates, 2009a and 2009b)
Nicola Yeates (2009a: 4) has written about how these ‘relations andpractices of care’ need to be situated ‘in the context of the formation
and reproduction of global social hierarchies’. Care is governed byeconomic, political and social structures and institutions and it concerns mobile labour, paid or unpaid, in a variety of contexts – voluntary, corporate, state and domestic (Yeates, 2009a: 4-6; 2009b: 176).
‘Care-chains’ emerge as a result of the commodification of care andcan be a useful policy tool for understanding these different forms it
takes in households and beyond (Misra, Woodring and Merz, 2006).
However, there remain limitations with care chain analyses, one being their linear focus. Examining how care moves from one place toanother in a unidirectional manner overlooks movements that do nottake this form; not all movements, for example, are from developing to developed countries. Some migrant journeys involve circular
movements back and forth between countries or within countries;
they also, as mentioned earlier, involve different types of care work
along a spectrum of skills. Ambreena Manji (n/a) argues in the context of Nairobi, for example, that ‘the contribution of women who arepaid to care for children in the private homes of their employers at
all socio-economic levels will be an enduring feature of life in African
cities for some time to come’. Moreover, through the mobility of domestic workers, ‘care chains link different urban sectors, as well as urban and rural regions´. As she highlights, ‘less attention has focusedon the movements of care workers within a single developing counThe Invisible Labour of Female Migrants in the Care Sector | 11try through internal migration and the everyday practices of intimate
and emotional labour’, in this case ‘against the backdrop of Nairobi´ssevere, social, material and racial inequalities’. Care therefore also
reflects the inequalities that accompany processes of contemporary
urbanization within countries in the Global South.
The focus on the exploitation of women in care chains, however, mightoverlook some of the opportunities this work provides to migrant women. Embedded as they are in a context of global inequality, these labour roles have the potential to provide opportunities for new forms ofagency. As Nicole Constable (2009) argues, the commodification of careand discussions of care deficits do not always fit in with the aspirations
and realities of female migrants who may find empowerment and transformation in and through the commodification of care. She writes thatrather than ‘bemoaning... the demise of authentic relations outside therealm of capital’ and alongside studies of power and risk involved in thecommodification of intimacy, research agendas could also more productively engage with the ‘potentially liberating and transformative aspects
of intimate subjectivities’ (Constable, 2009: 58-59). Scholar Martin Manalansan (2008) similarly critiques the concept of care chains for their reinforcement of normative ideals of care and love as female, ‘authentic’ andheterosexual. He calls for alternative ways to analyse the mobility of care
workers who might not see their absence from their home countries andfamilies as a ‘global heart transplant’ and the displacement of ‘authentic’
caring emotions.
Indeed, the absence of women to earn money for their families
abroad is very often spoken about in negative terms through morally laden public discourses that blame ‘absent mothers’ and construct them as uncaring. However, such discourses overlook the ways
in which migration may be empowering for migrant women, and how
it might enable them to realise their personal aspirations to care for
their own futures and families’ futures. Such discourses also overlook
how transnational families are in fact adapting to current realities increative ways. For example, the spread of digital media has offereda diverse range of avenues through which migrant women keep in
regular contact with families at home and maintain some form ofpresence in their children’s or families’ lives, even if this presence isambivalent (Madianou and Miller, 2012). Moreover, the feminisationof migration is also allowing new gender roles to become normalised,
which include fathers and extended families caring for children whilemothers are away at work. Family care arrangements are changing
and the role of the extended family is often under-examined in analyses of female migration. Recognition of these crucial transformations
that are taking place can nuance discourses that speak one-dimensionally of broken families as a consequence of female migration.
While this report is focussed on migrant women, there is moreover
12 | UNU-GCM Policy Report 03/06

a wide range of migrant carers who may be single, married, male,
female, gay, transgendered, a fact that further challenges normative
discourses on care migration.
Directions for Social Policy
Migrant women need decent wages and decent conditions of workin order for them to sustain their transnational family lives, emotionally and financially. Policy initiatives that focus on the negative impacts of global care chains propose alternative models of care thatare less dependent on migrant women, such as care credits which
are intended to reflect the participation of women in the labour
market and the burden of their care responsibilities; or increased
expenditure in public care infrastructure (Addis et al., 2011; Anderson and Shutes, 2014; FES, 2014). However, these are increasingly
challenging policy measures to implement in contexts of neoliberal
restructuring, austerity and reduced social expenditure, where careservices are more commonly outsourced to private providers. In thecontemporary global context, it is indeed migrant women who fillthese gaps in care. Wider policy recommendations to improve thestructures of care provision must also work to improve the conditionsof work for migrant carers to guarantee the wellbeing of all (bothmigrants and those being cared for).
It is also important for social policies to recognise the different meanings of care across the world. Parvati Raghuram (2012: 136) writes that‘care is adopted somewhat unquestioningly as the lens through which
to make sense of the social reproduction of households, communities
and economics in different, even dissimilar, parts of the world without
reflecting adequately on what might be locationally specific about carein diverse geographical contexts’. She argues that care may be ‘differentially embedded in cultural, political and economic formations suchas the family, the market, the state and the community sector in different
countries’. In this way, it is important to pay attention to migrants’ own
understandings of what care means and how it is practiced and valued
in a range of social and cultural contexts (Amrith, 2010). As Raghuram(2012: 140) further argues, ‘these issues also affect how the care of thoseleft behind is distributed and who looks after migrant carers when they
are abroad. Local understandings and infrastructures of care deeply influence the claims that migrants can make in both these contexts’.
Policy that is sensitive to culturally embedded understandings of careand to the increasing importance of mobile care workers in this time ofdemographic and socio-economic change, must foreground the protection of migrant women’s rights so as to reduce the exploitation of
migrant women working in private spaces such as family households.
This requires above all, valuing the transnational care economy andunderstanding its gendered dimensions.
The Invisible Labour of Female Migrants in the Care Sector | 13

Photo: Tania Liu. Creative Commons BY-ND

14 | UNU-GCM Policy Report 03/06

Part 3: Intimate Labour
This part of the report examines migrant women in the sector of intimate labour, broadly defined. It includes a discussion of sex work(that does not involve coercion and trafficking)5, as well as otherforms of commodified intimacy such as entertainment and escort or
hostess work. These forms of intimate labour are often performedby migrant women and under different conditions (for example,
full-time or part-time, underground or undocumented), revealing
this sphere of intimate labour to be layered. This sector is not sowell understood given the gendered stigma associated with a lotof intimate labour and the lack of acknowledgement that intimacy
is increasingly purchased in different forms in the global capitalist
labour market (Zelizer, 2005).
While seemingly a distinct category of labour to those consideredearlier in this report, sex work also reflects similar patterns in termsof labour conditions and is perhaps even more precarious. It is a
sector in which migrant women are employed and it is largely invisible and unprotected by legislation and social welfare schemes.
There are interdependencies with the earlier forms of care labour discussed. My fieldwork-based research with Filipina women in Singapore
indicated that women working as nurses or domestic workers, as a result of low-pay and the need to support their families in their homecountries, for example, might take on side jobs on weekends or during their time off in order to supplement their income.6 Their everyday
formalised labour roles, as explained, are often undervalued and there
are thus interdependencies between formal and informal economies ofcare and intimacy that enable migrant women better chances to sustain
their livelihoods. At times, this might involve work as escorts in bars or
sex work. While each form of labour has its distinct policy challenges,
there are interconnections between them within the wider sphere ofcare and intimacy. Migrant women taking on jobs in sex work lack protection, making them vulnerable to abuse, exploitation and health risks,with few avenues to seek support. A report by UN Women (n/a) points
out that in the Asian context, ‘female migrants often work as domestic
workers and entertainers, a euphemism for sex workers in unregulated
informal sectors that do not fall under national labour laws. Migrant

5. Debates that relate
to sex trafficking andsex work conductedunder coercive
conditions are vast andcomplex. Trafficking in
sex involves coercion,
forced labour, sexual
exploitation and abuse,
all of which constituteserious human rights
violations. This reportfocuses more on
women who choose tomigrate for sex work,or who choose to do
sex work while abroad
alongside other typesof labour, though thisreport also recognises
the complexities
in determining theboundaries between
consent and coercion.
Many migrant women insex work are vulnerable
to traffickers, both at
the recruitment stage
and once abroad.
The debates relating
to sex trafficking are
crucial, however, remainbeyond the scope of
this particular report.

6. This is not exclusively
the case, and some
women might choose
to do sex work for otherreasons that go beyond
supplementing theirincome.

The Invisible Labour of Female Migrants in the Care Sector | 15

women routinely lack access to social services and legal protection andare subjected to abuses such as harsh working and living conditions’.
Other women might migrate specifically with the intention to do sex
work in destination countries. The documentary film Becky´s Journey
directed by Sine Plambech (2014) tells the story of a young Nigerian woman who twice attempts to migrate to Europe to sell sex in
Italy. The documentary highlights that this is a choice that womenmake and is not considered to involve trafficking or coercive pressures that go against their will (even if these migration decisions areoften driven by other pressures such as poverty and/or the search fora better life abroad). Migrants’ social networks of family and friends
also feedback stories that being a sex worker in Italy can offer high
pay and a sense of status and glamour abroad. The sex work industry
is now bound up with transnational female migrant labour. According to a study on migrant sex workers in the UK (Mai, 2011), ‘migrants
have come to form the majority of those who sell sex’, in a context
of global capitalism that ‘favours “flexible” and low paid workers’. The
study also found that the large majority of interviewed migrant workers
in the UK sex industry are not forced nor trafficked, and that rather, thiswork enables them to improve the conditions of life of their families
back home. There are a ‘great variety of life and work trajectories within
the sex industry, which were influenced by key factors such as: socialeconomic background; educational aspirations and achievements; immigration status; professional and language skills; gender and sexuality;
family history; and individual emotional history’. The study found that
immigrant status is the most important factor restricting the ability of
migrant sex workers to exercise their rights in their professional andprivate lives. The stigmatisation of sex work and being undocumented
negatively influences their experiences and makes them more vulnerable to violence and abuse. The findings of this study were intended
to guide more effective social interventions through a focus on migrantsex workers’ own voices and experiences.
In line with these findings, the advocacy of international organisations
in recent years has sought to decriminsalise sex work as a means tobetter protect the women who do this work and to recognise it aswork. According to a campaign run by the Open Society Foundations(2015) ‘many people who sell sexual services find the term “prostitute”
demeaning and stigmatizing. As a result, the term can also contributeto their exclusion from health, legal, and social services’, and deny
them the right to a safe working environment. It argues that the criminisalisation of sex work and the stigma attached to it has the effect ofdriving sex work underground, marginalising these women from society
even further. It exposes women to greater risks in terms of accessing
healthcare and makes reporting abuses or violence to relevant authorities more difficult. These arguments are a part of a ‘global movement’16 | UNU-GCM Policy Report 03/06

that ‘votes to adopt policy to protect human rights of sex workers’ (Amnesty, 2015). These campaigns are well aware of the power dynamics
in the sex industry and are clear that such campaigns intend to protect
the rights of sex workers (and to criminalise those who abuse or exploit sex workers). They aim to give sex workers voice and subjectivity
so that they do not remain ‘objects’ of power and of repressive andcriminalising policies that target undocumented migrants and sex workers (Peano, 2012).
Other initiatives also exist to enable sex workers the ability to exercise their agency, and to make decisions that may positively influence
their lives and wellbeing. This includes partnerships with financial institutions so that they can open bank accounts without documents,
support in the form of counselling and the formation of workers’ cooperatives that collectively advocate for rights to improve working
conditions (AWID, 2015). This furthermore enables a ‘greater oversightof commercial sex and potential trafficking within it’ (Amnesty, 2015).
There are also other forms of intimate labour that are not labelled
sex work, and that might or might not involve elements of sex work.
These include the work of escorts, hostesses or entertainers in bars aswell as those (often migrant women) who are paid for the emotional
labour of providing companionship (often to local men); these sectors
are thus also based on highly gendered roles. These jobs demonstrate how love might also play a role in these commodified forms of
intimate labour. They are ambiguous spaces that make the boundaries between work and love difficult to ascertain. This is illustrated
clearly in an in-depth anthropological study conducted by scholar
Leiba Faier of Filipina women in Japan. Since the late 1970s, many
Filipina migrant women went to Japan under entertainment visas, often through circular forms of migration (Parreñas, 2010). Some werepart of music, dance and cultural groups, but many women were also
working in hotel bars, cabarets and hostess bars; however, the selling of sex was considered illegal for those holding these visas. Faier(2009: 52) explains that ‘while increasing numbers of Filipina women
began to go to Japan on entertainer visas, growing numbers alsobegan to go through underground channels to work in other parts ofthe sex industry, often as prostitutes and in sex shows…on accountof these converging trends, Filipina entertainers in Japan came to be
popularly associated with sex work’. Their work was at once stigmatised but also glamorised for its associations with show business andcultural performance. Faier follows the stories of some of the women
who previously worked in the entertainment industry in Japan and
who were encouraged not to sell sex, but to develop intimate andaffectionate relationships with male clients. Many of the women she
interviewed have since married the Japanese men they met and provide companionship and care to them in rural parts of Japan andto perform the role of ‘ideal brides´ in the Japanese context; theyThe Invisible Labour of Female Migrants in the Care Sector | 17

too claim to find their new relationships empowering and fulfilling.
In some cases, women continued to work in local bars by night after getting married, as they were offered higher salaries than factory
work for example.
Faier’s work demonstrates the ambiguous spaces of entertainment,
sex work, emotional companionship, care and marriage. Migrant
women shift from one identity and role to another, oftentimes simultaneously. They also move between paid and unpaid forms of carelabour, and to roles such as ‘good wives’, which they might not regard as labour even if their presence and the caring work they dois central to the social reproduction of Japanese households. Theirlabour roles are therefore not static, nor are they defining elementsof migrant women´s trajectories or forms of personhood. Nicole Constable (2009: 56) is right to argue that ‘as scholarship on transnational
intimacies illustrates, relationships assumed to be based primarily on
paid work for money are often understood to involve complex forms
of intimacy, love, or emotion, and those assumed to be based onlove are linked in new and evolving ways to commercial practices andmaterial desires’.
There is furthermore a literature on international marriage migration(see e.g. Constable, 2003; Lu and Yang, 2010). This is no doubt an
important phenomenon, though this is often not examined throughthe lens of labour. While this particular report will not address thisphenomenon of international marriage migration in-depth, it does
nonetheless raise similar kinds of issues with regard to the invisible
forms of care and intimate labour that take place within such marriages and that involve migrant women. Beyond international marriages organised through agencies, there are the similarly invisible
forms of affective labour that are performed by women who move as
dependents of their husbands and who might work informally, if not
employed in the formal labour market. Their labour is important not
only in terms of maintaining households as per ‘traditional’ genderroles within more patriarchal family frameworks, but they also performthe labour of caring for family enterprises, adopting particular roles andtasks that sustain these businesses and families in their day to day functioning. These women may also be important cultural intermediaries
between families and the wider neighbourhoods and societies within
which they live. Examples of this can be found for example in the stories
of women in the Sindhi diaspora (see e.g. Falzon, 2004). Making skills
courses available to migrant women and allowing them safe spaces thatgive them the freedom to move comfortably across public and private
spheres, are important policy considerations in this area.
These on-the-ground stories demonstrate that policies that relate
to migrant women need to be aware of the complexities of migrant
18 | UNU-GCM Policy Report 03/06

women’s multiple roles and their vulnerabilities to exploitation andabuse in these roles, particularly in cases where undocumented migrant women are working underground. While important to recognise female migrant agency in the new relationships that they cultivate through or beyond intimate labour, it is equally crucial to beaware of new forms of coercion or power dynamics that could takeplace in domestic environments (beyond the labour market realm).
Greater support for civil society groups and collectives, as well as safe
spaces or shelters that might offer vulnerable women a place to go,
are important policy measures to adopt.

Joint Conclusions
and Recommendations
As more women across the world migrate for paid employment in thecare labour sector, the more policy has to be attuned to the specificexperiences of these different, yet at times overlapping forms of labour
in a sector that is under regulated and poorly valued. Everyday carework is critical to the sustenance and reproduction of households
and to the development of societies across the world. A genderedanalysis of this sector is crucial to examining the specific vulnerabilities that migrant women face and the persistent stereotypes
and stigmas that continue to shape perceptions of these forms oflabour (Kofman and Raghuram, 2006). At the same time, it is important to recognise the new empowering opportunities that transnational migration may offer women.
On the basis of the different forms of migrant labour that occur in transnational economies of care and intimacy, the following policy recommendations are made:To foreground migrant women’s labour rights in the care sector,
with a particular focus on ensuring that migrant women employedin these sectors are protected by labour legislation, social welfare
schemes and are not criminalised.
To value care work and advocate for its professionalisation throughredefining what skilled labour means in the global economy, formigrants and those in the home countries of migrants.
To recognise of different spheres within which labour takes place
and to give greater policy attention to the less visible spaces in
The Invisible Labour of Female Migrants in the Care Sector | 19

which labour takes place, such as private homes, or among undocumented migrants in informal economies.
To recognise that migrant women’s identities are not static or simplistically defined, and to offer opportunities for them to transform their situations and realise their aspirations.
To adopt distinctive approaches to specific types of labour but
to also ensure policy coherence between different labour sectors
given the shifting vulnerabilities that migrant women face in the
broadly defined economy of care and intimacy.
To encourage educational awareness on valuing different types oflabour in the global economy so that young persons and media
outlets do not stigmatise or stereotype particular types of gendered labour or labour arrangements.
To encourage educational awareness on changing gender roles
and meanings of family that adapt to transnational realities andchanging care arrangements in home and host countries.
To develop pre-departure orientations that prepare migrants for different cultural understandings of labour and to offer migrants support for seeking help if they experience abuse and discrimination.
To encourage flexibility in migrant visa categories so that they
have the right to change employers, to move between jobs and toensure their basic rights and decent working conditions are met.
Adherence to international conventions that seek to guarantee decent
working conditions and equal rights to migrant women. This includes
the ratification of the Domestic Workers Convention 2011 (C189) andcommitment to longer-standing international conventions such as The
Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against
Women (CEDAW) (1979), alongside other measures that address structural and systemic gender inequalities in the care sector.

20 | UNU-GCM Policy Report 03/06

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